Accounting & Auditing Update

The "Accounting & Auditing Update" is written by Tammy Whitehouse, a veteran business writer who has been a regular contributor to Compliance Week since 2005. Her work has also appeared in industry journals and periodicals including Journal of Business Strategy, Strategy & Leadership, Compensation & Benefits Review, Inc, Buyside, and myriad others. Whitehouse welcomes questions and comments from readers; she can be reached via e-mail at twhitehouse@complianceweek.com.

Audit regulators are pondering how audit committees can be better leveraged to raise the bar on audit quality, including whether audit committees should have a more direct line of contact with audit regulators.

The PCAOB said it is “encouraged” that most firms have complied with Auditing Standard No. 16, a standard governing communication with audit committees, as the board found no failures to comply in 93 percent of the audits reviewed in the 2014 inspection cycle. “The communication between an audit firm and the audit committee is fundamental to a reliable and high-quality audit,” said PCAOB Chairman James Doty in a statement.

In a survey from KPMG and Forbes of more than 400 CFOs and audit committee members nearly 60 percent said they would welcome help in assessing risks and risk-managing practices, but only 22 percent said they get that from internal audit; 36 percent said they would like to see an informed perspective on emerging risks coming from the internal audit shop, but only 5 percent actually see it. Craig Carter, a KPMG principal in internal audit, risk, and compliance services, says, “There’s a need to translate the value of the internal audit function into more than black-and-white compliance.”

As the SEC considers the potential for new disclosure requirements for audit committees, audit committees themselves are volunteering more, according to recent analysis by the Center for Audit Quality and Audit Analytics. The analysis revealed one-fourth of companies in the S&P 500 enhanced their discussion around the audit committee’s appointment of the audit firm in 2015, roughly double the number the year before. Details inside.

More than a decade after regulators began mulling how to give some transparency to investors around who actually performs public company audits, PCAOB Chairman James Doty said he is hopeful that the board is on track to “get this done by the end of the year.” Doty recently said the PCAOB received 45 comment letters on its proposal to require auditors to name engagement partners. Details inside.

According to a recent report from EY, audit committees for the largest companies continue to raise the bar on what they voluntarily say in their reports about their responsibility for and oversight of the external audit. In its analysis, EY says 21 percent of audit committees disclosed in 2015 that they are responsible for negotiating audit fees, up from 18 percent in 2014 and 9 percent in 2013. Details inside.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has provided a primer for corporate audit committees on how not to appoint and manage a chief audit executive. The FHFA’s inspector general has released a detailed report criticizing Fannie Mae’s selection of a chief audit executive in 2013, calling the audit committee’s process “far from diligent” and “haphazard at best.” More inside.

Yet more findings—these from Grant Thornton—reveal that audit committees and chief audit executives differ on priorities. According to the survey, audit committees rank financial risk as most important for internal audit, followed by compliance, operational, and strategic risks. CAEs, however, give compliance risk top billing, followed by operational, financial, and then strategic risks.

A recent letter from the Securities and Exchange Commission denies Citigroup’s proposal to bar a person with a history of bankruptcy from joining the audit committee. The Commission said it disagrees with Citi that a shareholder proposal to pursue a bylaw amendment on audit committee service should be excluded from the company’s proxy statement. More inside.

New academic research suggests the CFO, not the audit committee, still often negotiates the audit fee, despite Sarbanes-Oxley Act provisions meant to put audit committees in the driver’s seat. “At many companies it is still primarily the CFO who calls the shots,” says Elaine Mauldin, professor at the University of Missouri.